Release 1.7 Notes

Release 1.7 – Patch Notes

Available Jaunary 17, 2016

New Battleground (56-65):
Restricted Section

Not many are allowed into the Order Academy Library's Restricted Section,
much less the army of the Unchained. Enforce quiet hours by guiding your enemies
through this multilevel map and to their doom.

New Battleground (56-65): Confluence

A confluence of bad circumstances are afoot in the Order Academy canals.
Pirates are attacking the nearby village and a sewer-lurking firelord is chasing
kobolds into the Academy. Good luck slowing them down!

New Battleground (46-55): Maximum Security

Your hero will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy than in
the maximum security wing of the Order Academy Dungeon. This map is perfect for
ceiling traps and crossfiring wall traps. Don't forget to bring guardians!

Update: Leaderboards

All maps now have leaderboards available. Players can filter leaderboards by
friends, guild mates, and number of players.

Update:
Quests 2.0

Players now receive three quests daily, one for each of the reward
categories: experience, chest, and skulls. One quest may be abandoned daily, and
will be replaced with another quest in the same reward category. Quests now have
more possible objective types expanded from playing or winning a game.

New Feature:
Rotating Store

Each day, three different bundles of cards will become available in the
store. On Sundays, six bundles will be available. These bundles of cards can be
purchased using skulls. This will allow players to more quickly obtain
sought-after rare cards.

New Consumables:

Potion of Caffeination: Restores all cooldowns and
grants a 10% cooldown reduction until death. Limit 3 per match.

Potion of Experience: Grants 2 battle levels when used
and +10% experience until death. Limit 1 per match.

Potion of Mana: Restores all mana and grants +1 mana
per second until death. Limit 5 per match.

Scroll of Discount: Traps cost half as much for 10
seconds for all players. Limit 1 per match.

Potion of Mana: Restores all mana and grants +1 mana
per second until death. Limit 5 per match.

Guardian Reworks:

We are adding new and exciting functionality to guardians to make them more
powerful and fun to use. At home, new guardians will have a unique aura that
benefits allied players. Each guardian will also have a different type of damage
that they deal and special spin, ranged, and melee attacks. Below are the first
four guardians to reflect these changes.

Cook Guardian: When placed at home, all attacks poison
his enemies. In addition, his aura heals players when he is out of combat.
Once the player has full health, they receive the Full Stomach buff, which
grants bonus max health.

Bartender Guardian: When placed at home, this
guardian’s primary attack stuns enemies, and her area attack slows them. Her
aura dispenses Liquid Courage to nearby allies, reducing their ability
cooldowns while she is in combat.

Blacksmith Guardian: When placed at home, his primary
attack reduces all of his target's armor types and his area attack knocks
enemies back. While in combat, his aura fortifies ally armor with the Forged
Armor buff, reducing all incoming damage.

Weaponwright Guardian: When placed at home, his primary
attack sets enemies on fire and his area attack ignites any enemies already
on fire. While in combat, his aura imbues his allies' weapons with flame,
causing nearby players’ primary attack to set enemies on fire.

Dashboard:

The chest opening screen has been updated to better convey card rarity.

Account level experience is now displayed at the bottom of the
dashboard.

Barricades and Decoys:

Removed barricade and decoy healing during go breaks.

Temple Alarm Gong:

No longer Mesmerizes enemies but slow them by 70% for 2.5 seconds.

Unchained:

Consecutive acquisitions of Unchained have been made harder to obtain.
In other words, after the first time a player goes Unchained in a match, it
becomes subsequently harder and harder to become Unchained again.

Hero Design:

Bionka:

Damage reduced significantly.

Fixed a bug which allowed Bionka to remain Unchained for extended
periods of time.

Increased Beat Dem Back's cooldown to 40 seconds from 30 seconds.

Ivy:

The amount of health recovered by her heal has been increased by
roughly 50%.

The damage and armor penalty of Reach of Roots has also been
increased.

Comments

Seems like a good first patch, a question about the Temple Gong though, the "mesmerize" was referring to what roots them before the actual stun going off, right? Or is this simply a change in functionality from a stun to a slow?

One thing that I want to add and emphasize regarding these patch notes:

With this update there will be no changes to the trap upgrade system or the ability to earn cards for traps that are already Tier 7.

We have heard your feedback on this system and it is a top priority for us to improve this experience. We're working on this, but we do not have a design that we can share just yet. Your feedback has been tremendously helpful, and we'll share details on what you can expect as soon as we are able.

Bionka definitely needed a damage nerf but hopefully it doesn't make her too weak since she moves like a bucket of lard and cant catch anything that gets past her. The rotating card pack idea seems pretty cool.

Guys remember than these patches are usually worked on months in advance, so the more recent feedback wouldn't make it on this one, but that doesn't mean they aren't currently addressing some of those issues...

Ivy's Reach of Roots needs to be reworked not a buff,It conflicts with her kit. While the buff is certainly nice I doubt I'll use it anymore than I already do because she's still a squishy,ranged character who can't take a hit with an ability that roots her in place leaving her vulnerable to a multitude of threats (especially ogres) before it works. Even after it works the minions are only rooted and are still able to hit her,to make the most of it's effective area you risk taking damage or dying if you aren't careful,not wurf. tl;dr Roots is a melee ability on a ranged character.

Yeah the mention of significantly reducing Bianka's damage but nothing about increasing her speed is really scary. The only reason why she was good was because nothing could get through her. If things can now get through her, she cannot catch up. Devs please at least do some Rift Lord solo test matches with Bianka before you release this patch.

Also with Ivy, I'm not sure why you are buffing roots, but not buffing her left click attack? From what I understand, her roots were really strong to begin with. Her only struggle was killing large enemies without cliffs and unstable rifts.

Love that there are new levels coming!Don't really care about Leaderboards.The Barricade change is interesting.I don't really use Consumables because it feels like cheating.

Don't understand the Unchained nerf. I know a lot of players save unchained for rounds they feel overwhelmed, but once you learn the map you can unchain when you feel like it which was fun.

I think the "home" mechanic really wrecks the entire concept of different guardians. I want to be able to place the guardian whose ability works the best for my build, not the guardian the map tells me I have to use.

New Battlegrounds are nice, even if they are just the same or expanded versions of the tutorial maps. Always nice to have them in the game proper through!

Leaderboard Update is a great change. Does it only list by username and score, or does it have additional details such as hero used, the loadout, and account level?

Updated Quests seem pretty nice. I always wondered what the two blank spots were for, guess they now have a proper home!

Rotating Store sounds nice on paper, but I'll need to see it in action before I pass judgement. Are these "random bundle" cards, or does the player know what they are buying?

Well, today I learned that Consumables only give their passive benefit when the item is consumed for the first time, and it lasts only until death... I guess on the positive side I'm good enough without their passive benefits!

Guardian Reworks are interesting. So, will not "at-home" guardians give regeneration now or will it remain as it is?

Barricade and Decoys - Makes Wall Building PHD a lot more of a compelling choice for Barricades. Decoys I haven't really used, so can't comment.

Temple Alarm Gong - I guess the stun was too powerful, especially synergies with hero traits that do extra damage against stunned targets. Good thing I never used this thing! : D

A shame that Unchained is getting a nerf, but it is somewhat expected. The nerf is targeted towards players who go unchained constantly (like myself) versus those who use it as a panic button. However, I thought this system was already in place, but I'll look at its effects once the patch goes live.

Bionka's damage nerf was expected, so I wonder how that will play out. As for Ivy, I like the Reach of Roots buff (I thought it strong as is), but I much rather have Ivy have more survivability in terms of more health or changing her heal into an overshield. Her heal, while situationally useful, does not help when she gets one-shot easily.

* * * * *

Also, as an aside, I would like a "Fully Detailed Changelog" instead of "Marketing Patchnotes" for normal players. I like to see the exact numbers and changes instead of saying "significant damage nerf" or "functionality changed." The detailed changelog can be posted elsewhere or in a separate post in the Patch Topic thread.

Yeah the mention of significantly reducing Bianka's damage but nothing about increasing her speed is really scary. The only reason why she was good was because nothing could get through her. If things can now get through her, she cannot catch up. Devs please at least do some Rift Lord solo test matches with Bianka before you release this patch.

Also with Ivy, I'm not sure why you are buffing roots, but not buffing her left click attack? From what I understand, her roots were really strong to begin with. Her only struggle was killing large enemies without cliffs and unstable rifts.

Love that there are new levels coming!Don't really care about Leaderboards.The Barricade change is interesting.I don't really use Consumables because it feels like cheating.

Don't understand the Unchained nerf. I know a lot of players save unchained for rounds they feel overwhelmed, but once you learn the map you can unchain when you feel like it which was fun.

We definitely test the game with the balance changes we make. Bionka requires CC traps in order to be effective. If she can hold minions near her, she's strong. Otherwise, she's poor. She's currently fitting this intended playstyle.

Regarding the Unchained nerf, we started to realize that there wasn't really a reason to hold onto Unchained. We had good players going Unchained every single wave.

If you'll forgive me for speaking without having any real data to go on, I have some concerns.

Every hero performs better with Crowd Control. Tar traps, viscous or otherwise, are extremely effective in nearly every scenario on every map. Temple gongs, concussive pounders, web spinners, etc, are only slightly less useful. It's why creatures immune or resistant to CC are some of the most dangerous in the game. Bionka needing CC traps to excel isn't really that large of a departure from standard strategies with other heroes. Instead, she has a substantial weakness in her glacial movespeed that doesn't let her catch anything that slips by, like those dangerous critters I mentioned earlier. It's nothing some good teamwork won't overcome, but that's again true for any hero's weakness. Bionka as she stands now, but with less damage, doesn't offer a very exciting or unique playstyle for me.

Unrelated, I'm also skeptical about the proposed changes to the unchained meter. The way it sounds, players will just save their unchained meters for the important waves of any map. They'll still regenerate just as fast assuming a proper combo setup (or some lucky parts). All this really does is punish people to use unchained too much. I concede that it does introduce a strategic element in using unchained only when it counts.

Yeah the mention of significantly reducing Bianka's damage but nothing about increasing her speed is really scary. The only reason why she was good was because nothing could get through her. If things can now get through her, she cannot catch up. Devs please at least do some Rift Lord solo test matches with Bianka before you release this patch.

Also with Ivy, I'm not sure why you are buffing roots, but not buffing her left click attack? From what I understand, her roots were really strong to begin with. Her only struggle was killing large enemies without cliffs and unstable rifts.

Love that there are new levels coming!Don't really care about Leaderboards.The Barricade change is interesting.I don't really use Consumables because it feels like cheating.

Don't understand the Unchained nerf. I know a lot of players save unchained for rounds they feel overwhelmed, but once you learn the map you can unchain when you feel like it which was fun.

We definitely test the game with the balance changes we make. Bionka requires CC traps in order to be effective. If she can hold minions near her, she's strong. Otherwise, she's poor. She's currently fitting this intended playstyle.

Regarding the Unchained nerf, we started to realize that there wasn't really a reason to hold onto Unchained. We had good players going Unchained every single wave.

When you test stuff, do you try to hold multiple lanes? Because with her current speed it can already be hard enough. Also like the other person said, everyone benefits from CC traps. You are making it sound like people aren't spamming Ice Shards or making tons of choke points with Tar traps.

Bionka is too good because she can hold off the hardest lanes by herself. She will be horrible if she can't do that and also can't back up allies. It's already hard enough sometimes to help the team after you kill your lane.

Guardians are now becoming more unique with their own skills and buffs, eh? Neat. I hope this means the "home" spots will not be pointed towards a specific guardian;but for -ALL- of em. Also, the card bundle thing seems like a temporary "fix" to the RNG -- yet it still looks good enough for me.